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EDITORIAL: Be wary of trust fund ‘death panel’

Motorists have been coughing up for New Jersey’s 23-cent gas-tax hike for many months now. But the battles over the Transportation Trust Fund aren’t over yet. Now that the state is generating the $2 billion or so a year they want for projects, officials have to decide how to spend that money — once they’ve decided exactly how those decisions will be made.

Motorists have been coughing up for New Jersey’s 23-cent gas-tax hike for many months now. But the battles over the Transportation Trust Fund aren’t over yet.

Now that the state is generating the $2 billion or so a year for projects, officials have to decide how to spend that money — once they’ve decided exactly how those decisions will be made.

That’s the crux of a so-called TTF “cleanup bill” now working its way through the Legislature that’s intended to tie up some loose ends from the original gas-tax legislation approved last year. Among those loose ends is a proposed four-person panel — dubbed a “death panel” by critics — that would consider and prioritize projects for funding.

Supporters of the new panel, including Senate President Steve Sweeney, say it would provide a welcome layer of public scrutiny absent in the current system, in which Department of Transportation professionals largely make the call on green-lighting proposals. But while such transparency is worth pursuing, this particular approach is destined to turn resource deployment into a highly political process.

The panel would consist of the DOT commissioner and three “public members” to cover northern, central and southern portions of the state. Don’t be fooled, however, by the description of “public” participants. Those panelists will be political appointees, one each by the governor, Senate president and Assembly speaker, not to mention the DOT commissioner owing his or her job to the governor. Those members will be serving those who appointed them far more than the public, likely serving as surrogates in broader political conflicts. The plan mandates unanimity on all funding decisions, so one “no” vote for partisan reasons is all that it would take to scuttle a worthy project.

There’s another problem as well. Critics insist giving such power to the panel as constructed may be unconstitutional because lawmakers themselves aren’t making the final decisions. That’s another reason for pause.

It would be naïve, of course, to suggest the current system isn’t itself often plagued by politics. Projects favored by powerful people have a way of finding a path to acceptance — one way or another. There’s some value in shedding some light on the entire process rather than having the bureaucracy privately hash out approvals and rejections.

But this doesn’t feel like reform. This feels like New Jersey power brokers trying to gain more control over the system, with Democrats leading the way since by next year Democrats may control all of the seats.

Few would bother to stand up and champion the current review process and all of its flaws. But the state may be best served sticking with the status quo; sometimes the devil you know really is preferable to the devil you don’t. But if officials persist in creating the four-person panel, what should happen — if, that is, it proves constitutional — is a more independent method of appointing panel members. Leaving those choices in hands of the state’s three most powerful lawmakers is just asking for trouble.